Health minister Lamin Samateh says Gambia’s coronavirus positive infections would have hit 300,000 without observation of social-distancing.
The jaw-dropping figure was expected in just 300 days estimated for about twelve months.
The aforesaid number, it emerges, is estimates from analysts from Gambia’s presidency compared to the initial 181,000 projected pandemic incidents by the country’s health sector.
The revelation followed Sidia Jatta’s demands for the health minister to offer detailed insight into the impact of the covid-19 in the country before deputies approved yet another extension of the state of emergency.
“It was projected in the Gambia in the beginning of the pandemic, we would have a total 181,000 infections at the peak 3,300 per day but with social distancing, we were expecting 3000 infections and at the peak 1,000 infections per day. This was a similar projection by the WHO and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,” Dr Samateh said.
Elucidating, he fired on: “There was another projection by the policy analyst unit from the president’s office which showed 74-93 percent of the population might be affected.
“It is now expected without the social distancing, it is projected that there would be 300,000 cases in a period of 300 days -estimate for one year. But when it peaks, we expect to have 3000 cases per day and at the peak, there will be 10,00 active cases in this country.”
Switching to observance of social distancing regulations, the minister predicts a decline of 1,000 positive cases in 300 days with 30 possible sufferers of the ailment emerging at the passing of each day and at the peak, 6-7 cases being registered in a day.
“We expect the peak to be with social distancing at June 28th. This shows that the initial social distancing by the population has paid dividend,” he said, revealing there are 13 isolation centres of one room each ear-marked for suspected carriers of the disease.
